1) THREE REALMS- this has been argued time and time again on both sides of the fence but I feel the three realms is key to balance of population. I played on Bedevere Albion side on our server very early in the games life Hibernia had some great PvP guilds that would always tear up or zerg up to attack other players. In that scenario Albion and midguard had formed an alliance for that day and teamed up to shut down the opposition. Stuff like that was what made the community so much fun there were actual politics involved, and the three realms offered a way for players to take balance into their own hands

2) REALM ABILITIES- basically for any non DAOC players realm abilities were passive or active abilities your character gained from lvling up his "ranking" if you will pretty much equivalent to valor in SWTOR. This made the longevity of the game immense as people were always looking to kill more people to gain realm points and in turn gain new realm abilities. Instead of grinding for gear and being done in a month realm abilities offered not only a nice array of diversity between characters of the same class BUT made there always be a goal always something to shoot for it took A LOT of points to hit the max rank in DAOC. Not sure why all games now have neglected abilites over just a pure gear grind.

3) DARKNESS FALLS- Ok this one I hold near and dear i'll try to explain as best as I can for people who didn't play and go on to explain why I think it was beneficial to the game (sorry told you this would be a long post lol) Darkness falls was a dungeon that all 3 realms had access too ONLY IF YOUR REALM CONTROLLED A MAJORITY OF THE KEEPS IN RVR ZONES. The reason I feel this was an awesome dungeon was because in any MMO you have PvE players and PvP players obviously, Nowadays it seems the two are divided and pitted against each other but back in good ole DAOC we were a team. See the PvE players would be rooting and or helping the pvp players raid other realms keeps solely to gain access to darkness falls. We became one force fighting to gain control over a very lucrative dungeon. The kicker came in the fact that if another realm retook back there keeps and you were inside the dungeon guess what.....no more of your realm could enter and now one of the other opposing realms had access. Some of the best Guild vs guild fights I have had was when my guild was deep in DF and another realm took it we would be fighting to stay alive at al costs so we could stay down there!

4) NO PVP STAT- I know I know this idea was created to balance PvP separate from PvE I get it....but why 10 years ago was this not an issue? As someone who enjoys both aspects of the game a specific stat for each type becomes nothing but a headache. If I want to raid to get a sick breastplate for PvP or stab someone in the throat to get a awesome axe for PvE so should it be! When you get into "you need this stat for pvp" I find myself not wanting to take part in the raiding and what not because that item is virtually useless to gear I would acquire while grinding WZ's. I get that people who hate pve dont want to have to raid to get the best stuff by why not simply offer equal teir gear from both options? it seems like an easy fix that noone has even tried to implement.

5) RELIC RAIDS AND KEEP TAKES- ok this is the last one I promise lol (told you it would be long ahead of time) This is probably one of the biggest things for me just because of the sheer fun I had with these. Each realm had 2 relics 1 for melee damage one for magic damage you could raid the other realms relics for the bonus which took place not only in PvP but PvE as well, this was another aspect that brought pvp and pve players together AND created some of the most engaging fights I have ever seen in an MMO to date. Imagine your chillin with some guildmates doing some dungeon runs for some equipment when all of a sudden you are alerted by realm mates that another realm has launch a raid against your main keep. People were frantic and when I say battles took place im talking 100+ each side battling to defend/attack and that was if the 3rd realm didn't jump in for some realm points and action. This added a reason along with bettering your character to be out there fighting it gave a sense of "this is my realm ****" the keep takes were a smaller scale but still just as fun specific guilds could capture keeps allowing their guild crest to be flown high above the keep walls showing just what guild rocked your world lol